Books and finale: some stuff
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:56 am
Someone asked a while back why I'd drawn the final storyline "in a completely different style."
I don't actually think I did, but there's also a reason it was a bit different: I did the last storyline digitally, after a decade of doing comics on paper with ink.
I had meant to finish the strip out on paper, not least of all because you can't sell originals when the original is just pixels, but I was just *so* into doing my art digitally by that time that I reasoned that doing it that way was about the only way I was actually going to finish it.
I didn't really mean to become a digital artist--there's a reason I held out for so long. But, a year ago, Orv got me a tablet for Christmas. At first I just used it for things like coloring. But, the more I did that, the better I got with it. And, when a friend gave me an extra copy she had of a program called Manga Studio, I was pretty hooked, and I started doing some of my inking digitally, too. Finally, I started doing everything, from sketches to color, with the tablet, and never putting ink or graphite or anything else to paper at all.
And the fact is I love it. I can redo or undo anything I want, I can copy and paste images and alter them for consistency...it's an enormous time-saver.
I suppose it did make the closing strips look a bit different. But, if the models seem to have drifted in the past year, it's also because my drawing style has evolved enormously in the last year. Partly it's all that working with a tablet. But also, it's partly because drawing in one style exclusively had become a bit stifling. A drawing style is something to grow within, and, at least in my case, eventually you've grown as much as you can within it, and you're like a plant that needs to be moved to a larger pot to keep growing.
That's what happened when I redesigned the characters in 2000; I was still into th strip as much as ever, but the style I'd developed several years earlier had become limiting, and so I spent a month redesigning the characters into a broader style that I could continue to grow within. (Fans at the time were not thrilled, but I think most people came around--though I still know plenty of people who prefer the original look of the characters.)
I reached that point again, finally, and that was part of my decision to end the daily strip, and to do future stories involving the characters in a format that might allow me to flex my art muscles a bit more. I hope people will enjoy those.
(My new project, "Raine Dog," will be debuting on Keenspot very shortly. Watch for it.)
I don't actually think I did, but there's also a reason it was a bit different: I did the last storyline digitally, after a decade of doing comics on paper with ink.
I had meant to finish the strip out on paper, not least of all because you can't sell originals when the original is just pixels, but I was just *so* into doing my art digitally by that time that I reasoned that doing it that way was about the only way I was actually going to finish it.
I didn't really mean to become a digital artist--there's a reason I held out for so long. But, a year ago, Orv got me a tablet for Christmas. At first I just used it for things like coloring. But, the more I did that, the better I got with it. And, when a friend gave me an extra copy she had of a program called Manga Studio, I was pretty hooked, and I started doing some of my inking digitally, too. Finally, I started doing everything, from sketches to color, with the tablet, and never putting ink or graphite or anything else to paper at all.
And the fact is I love it. I can redo or undo anything I want, I can copy and paste images and alter them for consistency...it's an enormous time-saver.
I suppose it did make the closing strips look a bit different. But, if the models seem to have drifted in the past year, it's also because my drawing style has evolved enormously in the last year. Partly it's all that working with a tablet. But also, it's partly because drawing in one style exclusively had become a bit stifling. A drawing style is something to grow within, and, at least in my case, eventually you've grown as much as you can within it, and you're like a plant that needs to be moved to a larger pot to keep growing.
That's what happened when I redesigned the characters in 2000; I was still into th strip as much as ever, but the style I'd developed several years earlier had become limiting, and so I spent a month redesigning the characters into a broader style that I could continue to grow within. (Fans at the time were not thrilled, but I think most people came around--though I still know plenty of people who prefer the original look of the characters.)
I reached that point again, finally, and that was part of my decision to end the daily strip, and to do future stories involving the characters in a format that might allow me to flex my art muscles a bit more. I hope people will enjoy those.
(My new project, "Raine Dog," will be debuting on Keenspot very shortly. Watch for it.)
